Politicians, guns and political grandstanding

Graphics

A person can kill using a gun, but guns alone are inanimate objects. By accident, negligence or by mental disorder, a person can harm or kill. It is a very complex issue that our society must and will tackle.

Vice President Joe Biden recently said that he will “take thousands of people out of harm's way and improve the safety of millions more.” Yet for the Obama administration to state that it will do so by executive order suggests a dictatorial style of behavior. America desperately needs meaningful leadership, not political grandstanding. The result will create more damage than any possible good and will delay formation of meaningful, corrective direction.

Obama wants Congress to reinstate an assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004 – one that didn't work. Meanwhile, hope that he will lead on budget and deficit reduction is nil.

John Rette

Mission Viejo

There is too much discussion about gun control mechanics, and too little about causation [“Checks and bans,” Front Page, Jan. 17]. If you investigate the lives of young men committing mass murders, I am certain you will note one or both of the following: an absent or uninvolved father who could have provided structure and training to a son who needs to understand boundaries and discipline, and a lack of religious involvement, which could have imbued these young men with an understanding of right and wrong, of the value of human life, and the importance of living outside oneself rather than the narcissistic world view that many of these killers held.

The progressive drive diminished the role of families and fathers, and minimized the role of religion in society. We now reap the whirlwind. Children, especially young men, need structure, direction and moral and ethical training and boundaries – if they suffer mental or emotional illness.

Unfortunately, progressives want to focus on things like weapon design and cartridges per gun clip, rather than on the human toll that their attack on traditional families and religion have played in creating a generation of damaged individuals.

David Brisco

Newport Beach

I would have loved to have seen Attorney General Eric Holder's face when President Barack Obama said that he wants new gun trafficking laws penalizing people who help criminals get guns. Have we forgotten the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious?

Mike Carter

Tustin

Recent talk about gun control is a colossal waste of time. If gun-control proponents want to be educated they ought to visit local, overcrowded prisons. Once there, they can ask one of the thousands of convicted felons who used an assault weapon during his or her act of violence if any of the local, state or federal laws, or if gun control in any form or fashion, impacted the decision to use the weapon to commit their crime.

Assault weapons did not kill children in Newtown nor did they kill men and women in Aurora, Colo. Mental illness did. It's a tougher issue for politicians to tackle but if everyone were to focus on the issue there might be some lives saved.

Sowell explains that Zinn's book sold millions of copies, “poisoning the minds of millions of students in schools and colleges against their own country” [“Educating for ‘change,'” Columns, Jan. 9]. Zinn is quoted elsewhere as saying, “I wanted my writing of history and teaching of history to be a part of a social struggle.”

Sorey leaves unchallenged Sowell's main point: John Dewey's progressive attitude toward education is now deeply entrenched in departments of history, government, language and literature that teachers accept that they are agents of change. Their job is not to transmit society's knowledge and experience to a younger generation. Instead, a teacher's job becomes “someone strategically placed with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.”

If American students gullibly swallow negative indoctrination about the evils of America, and if these students lack alternative instruction in the good that America has achieved, then who among them will be willing at some point in the future to step forward to defend and, if necessary, to die defending our cherished freedoms, especially the freedom of speech enjoyed by John Dewey, Howard Zinn and Doug Sorey?

Ron Higby

Huntington Beach

Convenient omission

The graphic comparing presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack H. Obama conveniently left out the debt listings for 2011 and 2012 [“The presidency in terms,” News, Jan 16].

Had the news graphic accurately completed what would have been the bulbous part of that graph, readers would have seen an accurate representation of the unparalleled growth rate of our debt. The total to date is $16.4 trillion, not the $13.5 trillion shown.

Bill Kaszton

Coto de Caza

Combating weather?

Columnist Kevin O'Leary, a political scientist and not a physicist, seeks to enlighten us on global warming [“Warming is not a partisan issue – it's physics,” Opinion, Jan. 17]. The human imperative, since the dawn of man, has been to create and preserve warmth.

Think about it. Food (calories), shelter and clothing are all about getting warm and staying that way. Nature has given us the temporary gift of a natural warming cycle, and we are told, by part of the scientific community (the part that is awash in government grants), that this is some kind of disaster. Furthermore, we are urged to turn over multitrillions in tax monies to them so that they will control the weather.

Humans and nature have shown a remarkable capacity to adapt. As long as people still voluntarily move to Phoenix, we can be pretty sure the rest of us will do fine.

Peter Rich

Huntington Beach

Traffic troubles

What is going on with the traffic lights in Orange County? Routine trips I make in Huntington Beach that used to take 10 minutes now take a half hour.

Traffic lights seem to stay red much longer than they used to. I was traveling north on Newland Street today and stopped at a red light at Garfield Avenue. By the time it turned green, there were about 20 cars in each direction waiting on Newland. Only four cars went by in the cross traffic on Garfield.

What a waste of time and gas! What happened to the Measure M funds going to time the lights to improve traffic flow?

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.